Graduate Institute Fellows 2008
Joanne Nystrom Janssen (Senior Institute Fellow) has a master's degree in English literature from Ball State University and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in English, specializing in 19th-century British literature. Prior to to graduate school, she worked as an editor for a non-profit organization that advocated for gender equality in the religious community. The experience of writing and editing articles exploring the impact of global poverty on women, the role of racism in America, and the effect of women's exclusion in male-governed churches deepened her personal commitment to social justice and also shaped her research interests in literature. As a 2007 Obermann Graduate Fellow, Joanne developed a service-learning rhetoric course, which she taught in spring 2007. The course was featured in the June 2007 issue of the Iowa Alumni Magazine
Megan Berner graduated from the University of Nevada Reno with a BA in hotography and Spanish and is currently a third-year MFA student in the Intermedia Program in the School of Art and Art History. Lately, she has been focusing on her work in video and installation and has
turned her studio into a green house. Working with grass and other live plants has led her toward expanding her artistic practice toward the community via gardening. She explores themes of identity, memory, daydreaming, mapping, being a twin, and the use of narratives and storytelling. Communication, context, and community are all things she thinks about when making her work.
Kirsten Beyer is a fourth year graduate student in the Ph.D. program in Geography at the University of Iowa, studying the geography of health. She holds an MPH in global health, also from the University of Iowa. Before joining the Geography Department, she worked for three years with a local nonprofit organization dedicated to violence prevention. Her research interests include geographic information science, participatory research, health disparities, cancer prevention and control, environmental health, and intimate partner violence. She hopes to incorporate experiential learning techniques in her teaching and is interested in the intersection between critical pedagogy and place-based learning, which focuses on the importance of critically engaging with space and place and questioning one’s role in the learning process and the larger organization of society. She is currently in the process of writing her dissertation proposal, which will incorporate community participation in exploratory spatial analysis of colorectal cancer incidence, stage, screening and mortality data.
Bridget Draxler has a BA in English from St. Olaf College and an MA in Romantic and Sentimental Literature from the University of York; she is now in her second year of PhD work in English Literature at the University of Iowa, specializing in 18th century literature and focusing on the intersections of drama and the novel in the formation of 18th heroic identity. Currently a graduate instructor for an accelerated rhetoric course entitled "Interpreting Images of Identity," Bridget is planning a rhetoric course which will explore controversies surrounding education--including community, political and consumer issues--via service learning.
Megan Foley is a University of Iowa Presidential Graduate Fellow in Communication Studies with a specialization in Rhetoric and Public Advocacy. Her dissertation, “The Rhetorical Figuration of Intimate Abuse and the Trajectory of Publicity,” draws relationships between affect, the configuration of publics, and political agency in the uptake of figures of intimate abuse. Her broader research interests lie at the intersections of rhetorical theory, feminist theory, theories of publics and politics, and critical-cultural studies. Megan has designed and taught an undergraduate service-learning course, “The Rhetoric of Intimate Partner Violence,” in conjunction with the university’s Women’s Resource and Action Center, and participated in the University of Iowa’s Campus Anti-violence Coalition.
Jonathan Johnson is originally from St. Paul, MN and received a BA in photojournalism from the University of Alaska and MA in photography from Minnesota State University. Currently, he is an MFA candidate in Photography, with research interests in experimental image making processes and the changing social and physical landscape of post-tsunami Thailand. He has shown work in the U.S. and abroad, serves actively in the Society for Photographic Education (SPE), teaches beginning photography at the University of Iowa, and is in the planning stages for photo workshops engaging underrepresented youths in the Iowa City area. His upcoming activities include taking part in a traveling exhibition in Shanghai and Rome, group exhibitions in Phuket, Thailand and lecturing at SPE’s national conference in Denver, CO.
Kate Kauper is a first year PhD student in Educational Policy and Leadership Studies. She earned her B.A. in Anthropology and M.A. in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Colorado in Boulder. While teaching high school social studies, she became interested in how student activism affects academic achievement through her involvement with Amnesty International and PeaceJam, an organization that connects marginalized students with Nobel Peace Laureates. She plans to develop a human rights curriculum that includes a service-learning component which links community services and leaders with teens from diverse backgrounds. In doing this, she hopes that the discourse resulting from these connections will lead to higher achievement and self-concept for adolescents and an overall increase in their community and global socio-political awareness. Kate's research interests include equity in educational opportunity, socio-cultural anthropology in education (particularly in regard to individual agency), and gender studies.
Jacqueline “Jackie” Leung-Heras is a M.S. student in the College of Public Health in the Department of Community and Behavioral Health. Her research interests include working with Latino immigrants with a focus on empowerment strategies, health disparities, and social justice. She has affiliations with many groups and organizations. She is the President of the College of Public Health Student Association, the Communications Chair for the Latino Graduate Student Association, a Project Export Scholar, a Women’s Resource and Action Center Diversity Dialogue Facilitator, and a previous Mobile Clinic board member. Jackie is also involved with The Bridge, a pilot program established to bring about diversity awareness activities to the University of Iowa campus. Her master’s thesis explores how social relationships affect an individual’s perception of the availability of their community assets. Jackie enjoys spending time with her husband, Antonio and watching movie.
Renee Lorence is a second-year master's student in Urban and Regional Planning. She earned a BS in History and Political Science at the University of Wisconsin Superior. At Superior she received a Gilman scholarship to study a semester in Poland. Two years later she traveled to Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina where she attended a 3-week study abroad and then interned 4 weeks with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. Before college Renee lived six months with a Navajo family, which opened her eyes to the social and housing issues on reservations. She recently spent a week volunteering to help build a straw bale house on the Hopi reservation. She is interested in sustainable housing design especially on reservations.
Ben Postlethwaite is a third year PhD student in Management & Organizations in the Tippie College of Business. He holds a BA in Religion from Pepperdine University and an MSc in Health Management from Imperial College London. Prior to graduate study at Iowa, he worked in emergency medical services as an EMT, paramedic, and director of a rural ambulance service. At Iowa, he has instructed courses in career preparation and strategic human resource management. His current research focuses on employee selection, organizational and professional commitment, and mentoring. He is particularly interested in hazing, and is currently exploring the causes and consequences of extreme socialization tactics in educational, social, and work organizations.
Emma Rainey is currently a second-year MFA candidate in the Nonfiction Writing Program. Originally a student at the Rhode Island School of Design, she dropped out to dance, teach, choreograph, and serve as director of several dance companies. In 2003 she finished her undergraduate degree at U of I, earning a BA with honors in English, was named a collegiate scholar, and was also awarded a Rhodes Dunlap Scholarship. The main thrust of her life has been driven by teaching and working with children. After moving to Iowa City, she began volunteering at Shelter House, coordinating efforts to provide activities for the children during the summer months. Last year she began to focus her volunteer efforts on Shelter—a facility run by Four Oaks for homeless teens in Iowa City—and taught yoga, writing, and raised money for the teens to attend Hancher performances. Convinced in the transformative power that reading and writing (in addition to creating art, dance, acting, singing, and music) can provide, especially to marginalized populations, she plans to create a partnership between the university’s graduate students and Shelter, to begin engaging the at-risk teens in the process of developing positive identities via the arts.
Jonathan Rattner is a filmmaker and Iowa Arts Fellow. He is currently pursuing his M.F.A. degree in film and video production, where he focuses on lyrical non-fiction videos. He has screened his work at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, The World Social Forum in Brazil, The University of Iowa Museum of Art and festivals and colleges in Europe and the United States. He has been involved in using video production as a community activism tool for over ten years, working with nonprofits in N.Y.C, seeking to redress problems of child development and education, housing displacement, prison recidivism and poverty. For the last two years he has been the creative director at Iowa City Senior Television where he has helped launch Iowa City Senior Television Online and introduced "the linn street collective," intergenerational collaborative programming involving the Senior Center Television Crew and University of Iowa students.
Lindsey Row-Heyveld is in her fourth year of the Ph. D. in Literature program. A native Nebraskan, she completed her B. A. in English at Greenville College in Illinois before beginning graduate work at Iowa. Her academic focus here is on the performance of disability in early modern drama, and, in particular, the influence of the English Reformation on the cultural construction of disability. She is beginning preliminary work on her dissertation which will examine the performance of disability both on and off the stage in early modern England, looking specifically at the tradition of the “counterfeiter,” an individual who would feign disability for money (an early modern form of disability fraud). She extends her commitment to disability studies in the Humanities to her own classroom, where her students in Interpretation of Literature are encouraged to consider disability alongside other categories of identity like race, gender, and class.
Elithet “Eli” Silva-Martínez has a master’s degree from the University of Puerto Rico and is a PhD candidate in Social Work at the University of Iowa. Before pursing her PhD, she worked with victims of domestic violence and their families. Currently she collaborates with the Women’s Resource and Action Center and the Domestic Violence Intervention Program in the Dating Violence, Sexual Assault and Stalking Project. Also, she works with community based groups that focus on immigrant rights. In her research, Eli examines the intersection of race and gender in the help-seeking behaviors of battered Spanish-speaking, immigrant Latinas living in eastern Iowa. Using the methodology of critical ethnography, she is opening spaces for battered immigrant Latinas tovoice their struggles and needs, as well as their strengths. Eli believes in emancipatory and empowering teaching, research and practice. This is precisely the catalyst for her work.
Kenda Stewart is a Crossing Borders Fellow and Ph.D. candidate in sociocultural anthropology. After spending two years in Israel/Palestine completing her fieldwork and interning for the Mossawa Center, an advocacy center for Palestinian Arab citizens in Israel, she has returned to Iowa to begin writing her dissertation. Her research focuses on the cultural political implications of women’s soccer in Israel, focusing primarily on the only Palestinian Arab women’s soccer team in the Israeli league. Her work at the Mossawa Center focused primarily on writing position papers and recommendations to members of the European Parliament and Commission and other international actors whose policies affect the Palestinian Arab citizens in Israel.
Mary White is a first year PhD student in the College of Public Health's department of Community and Behavioral Health. A North Carolina native, Mary earned her bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Prior to coming to Iowa, Mary completed an NIH Health Informatics fellowship at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore MD, where she conducted research projects on the use of videogaming as therapeutics in the pediatric hospital setting. She has spent the summer and fall of 2007 as an intern at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, where she is focusing on utilizing information resources and technologies to strengthen health work forces in developing countries. With a background in informatics and community development work in Africa and Latin Amerca, during her PhD studies, Mary hopes to understand challenges and catalysts of information and communication in global health.
Shiori Yamazaki is an MA candidate in Japanese Literature. She has worked as a volunteer interpreter for survivors of the bombing of Hiroshima who visited Iowa and is interested in developing A-bomb education projects for Iowa schools and communities. Her research interests include social justice, the proletarian fiction of Takiji Kobayashi, and media analysis. She conducted an exclusive interview with Noriaki Imai, who had been held hostage in Iraq in 2004 and was subjected to harsh treatment upon his return to Japan. You can listen to the English language version of her interview or the original Japanese interview on the KRUI website.